Inside the Great Traveling Circus of the Tour de France: the Canada Letter
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Version 0 of 1. This edition of the Canada Letter is not coming to you from somewhere in Canada. Instead I’m at the Alpe d’Huez ski resort in France, famed for its sinuous access road that attracts thousands of cycling fans to bake in the sun, drink (far too much, in many cases) and eventually cheer for the riders of the Tour de France. On and off since 1992, I’ve filled a large suitcase and abandoned my family for up to three weeks to report on cycling’s biggest event. It’s all Steve Bauer’s fault. The cyclist from Fenwick, Ontario, wasn’t the first Canadian to ride the Tour. That honor goes to Pierre Gachon, who traveled from Quebec to the race in 1937 — only to quit during its first stage. Neither was Mr. Bauer the first Canadian to wear the yellow jersey of the race leader. Alex Stieda, who was born in Vancouver and now lives in Edmonton, became the first North American to pull on cycling’s most coveted bit of clothing in 1986. But Mr. Bauer was the first Canadian to achieve widespread recognition at the Tour. He wore the yellow jersey for nine days in 1990. For many riders, one day in yellow is enough to make a career. When French cycling fans or hotel owners figure out that I’m Canadian, they often still ask if I know Mr. Bauer, who was also an Olympic medalist and a contender in other major bike races. Yes, in fact. I met Mr. Bauer for the first time back in 1992, when after several years of writing about his exploits from Canada, my editors at the Southam news agency, now defunct, decided to ship me off to France. (I was the only reporter there who cycled and followed the sport.) Back then, live television broadcasts of the race in Canada were only a dream, and my knowledge of the Tour came mainly from two sources: French and British cycling magazines that arrived long after the race was over, and The New York Times. By The Times, I really mean my friend Sam Abt. Sam began following the Tour for The Times in 1978, something no other North American newspaper was doing consistently at the time. Unlike me, he had no background in cycling. But while rereading many of his Tour stories in The Times’s archive, I was struck by his brilliant analysis and dry wit. His earliest Tour story in The Times, 40 years ago, predicted big things for Bernard Hinault, then a young rider from Brittany starting the Tour for the first time. It was a good call. Mr. Hinault, a rider so tenacious he’s known as the Badger, won the race that year and went on to take the title four more times, among his many victories. [Read: Hinault Is Primed for Tour de France] Sam, by the way, has an important cameo in the annals of journalism history. As an editor of the Times articles on the Pentagon Papers, the top secret documents laying out the United States’ decision-making on the Vietnam War, he was named as a defendant in the Nixon administration’s initially successful court effort to block further publication of the documents. (“The Post,” a 2017 film directed by Steven Spielberg, told the story of The Washington Post’s efforts to catch up with The Times’s scoop.) At some point he moved on to editing at The International Herald Tribune (now The International New York Times) in Paris, and that’s how he ended up at the Tour. When I first showed up to cover it, Sam — who is now retired and living in the Paris suburbs — was extremely gracious in helping me sort out the race’s often unfathomable bureaucracy and headache-inducing logistical challenges. Some things never change. Sam wrote about doping in 1978. And I started writing about the sport’s dark arts in the late 1980s. At times I’ve felt like a science writer, particularly before the French police’s doping raid that nearly shut down the Tour in 1998, and then again in the Lance Armstrong era. During that period I often worked with Juliet Macur, whose relentless reporting raised doubts about Mr. Armstrong long before he was officially sanctioned. This year is the second in a row in which there are no Canadians in the race (and only five Americans). But Geoff Brown, a native of Ottawa and a mechanic with Team Education First-Drapac, will be given a medal marking his 20 years of involvement in the annual race. (This year is actually his 21st — a mix-up delayed the ceremony.) And there’s another Canada connection: McCain Foods, New Brunswick’s frozen-food giant, is a major sponsor of the race. A small army of students toss out shopping bags on the company’s behalf, some wearing foam costumes that make them resemble walking stacks of French fries. (The temperature inside the costumes probably is close to that in a deep fryer.) A few years back, I answered some questions about how I spend my time while covering the Tour. It’s always an adventure, but it isn’t the paid vacation most people imagine — really. The struggle to avoid running over spectators and cyclists (particularly the ill-advised ones who descend the mountain as hundreds of Tour cars, trucks and buses are going up) while driving the switchbacks of L’Alpe d’Huez left me frazzled. Although I am proud to boast that, once again, I neither burned my rental car’s clutch nor stalled while dealing with a stick shift in stop-and-start traffic on the steep mountain grades. Unlike some years, this year I’m writing longer features rather than daily stories from the Tour. If there’s something you’d like to know about the race, how I cover it or cycling in general, please drop me a line and I’ll do my best to send you an answer: austen@nytimes.com. —Jesse Green, the co-chief theater critic of The Times, made note of the director Robert Lepage’s use of innovations like setting scenes as talk radio conversation in his production of Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” at the Stratford Festival. Through his alterations, Mr. Lepage “helps clarify Shakespeare’s portrait of a world, like ours, overwhelmed with insincerity,” writes Mr. Green. —But Mr. Lepage continues to attract criticism of another kind. After the cancellation of “Slav,” his show in which a mostly white cast picked cotton while portraying enslaved black people, he is now under fire for creating a new show about the subjugation of Indigenous people in Canada that does not have a single Indigenous person in its cast of about 30. —Ted Loos, a culture writer, took an in-depth look into the questions the Art Gallery of Ontario is asking about works in its collection by Indigenous artists or on Indigenous themes. —While it’s a long way from the scale of, say, McDonald’s, the Montreal restaurant Joe Beef has added another outpost, Mon Lapin. In a review, Shaun Pett found that its menu “is both serious in intent and playful in execution.” |